Grundfos brings safe and clean water solutions to Ghana
Innovative projects aimed at supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goal for Clean Water and Sanitation
Grundfos, the world’s largest pump manufacturer and global trendsetter in water solutions, has renewed its commitment to the Ghana market with an increased focus in bringing its pioneer water solutions that improve quality of life for people to local communities.
While Grundfos, a Danish company with 83 subsidiaries worldwide, has been actively providing water solutions in Ghana for 14 years and established an Accra office in 2013, the primary focus now is on bringing safe and clean water to the 40 percent of people living in rural and peri-urban areas of Ghana that lack access to safe water.
Sustainability is at the core of Grundfos’s worldwide business and the company is committed to supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals SDG6 and SDG13, which focus on improving water and sanitation supplies and fighting Climate Change. With 1,000 children under the age of 5 dying every day worldwide as a result of unsafe drinking water, and 1.6 billion people having to walk approximately 30 minutes to get water, the global water challenges call for dramatic changes. In Ghana, erratic power supply and lack of maintenance also tends to affect the operation of water treatment systems, thus compounding the already dire situation.
The Grundfos SQFlex pump was designed with the clean water challenges of developing countries such as Ghana in mind and has sold more than 40,000 units in sub-Saharan Africa in the last five years alone. The award-winning technology can operate on solar power, as well as ordinary single-phase power supply, wind power, generators, batteries or various combinations of these. The pumps have been certified and funded by various institutions, including the World Bank, DANIDA and UNICEF and are currently in use in intelligent rural-based water dispenser systems that can be used to treat and deliver clean and reliable water to informal urban settlements and rural areas.
Claus Villekjaer Nielsen, Grundfos General Manager, West Africa, says: “The water challenges both on a Ghana-level and worldwide are significant, but we believe that water should be everyone’s concern and we are pioneering solutions to the world’s water and climate challenges to improve the quality of life for people.”
The development of the Grundfos solar pumps began nearly forty years ago, which is evidence of the company’s long-standing ambitions to provide water solutions that change people’s lives for the better. Another Grundfos product that brings safe and clean water to Ghanaian communities is the innovative AQtap water dispenser. The AQtap is an intelligent rural-based water dispenser system that can be used to treat and deliver clean and reliable water to informal urban settlements and rural areas.
“It is estimated that a person living in West Africa uses about 20 litres of water per day; the equivalent of more than 50 sachets of ‘pure water,’ or nearly five ‘Kufour gallons’ but not all Ghanaian communities have access to safe and clean water and we want to change that”, said Mr Nielsen.
The AQtap technology incorporates a smart platform, which allows people to charge a smart card with credit bought onsite or via their mobile phones, insert it into the dispenser and pay for the water they need.